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One daya t the Paris Air show (professional days)
Hello everyone,
I’ve spent the whole day at the Le Bourget and I had the opportunity to meet two rafale pilots and a DGA engineer responsible for the AtG rafale weaponry integration. This was on the French armed forces static display, not Dassault’s.
I couldn’t have access to the Dassault static display today because of the number of official/TV delegations but I have an invitation for Thursday. The nice thing is that the French defense static was very comprehensive with a rafale B, a rafale M, an EC725 caracal with AdA para commandos (C-SAR), a mirage 2000D and a tiger helicopter. All the militaries were here to answer questions and as it was a professional day there weren’t too much people and I had really the time to talk with the pilots, the commandos or DGA staff.
I also crossed the French minister of defense which was visiting the French armed forced satic display but of course he was very busy with a big delegation of officers, industrials and cameras…So no chance to talk to him!
So the first rafale pilot that I met in the early afternoon (before the demos) was from the Marine Nationale. He is a former SuE pilot and has his night qual. Carrier landing with the rafale. He gave me quite a few “scoop” nothing extraordinary but still interesting when you are gleaning every piece of information.
Just to pick some of the stuff which didn’t appear in the press (many thing he said is already known), he told that when encountering F18 and F18 SH from the Roosevelt (dogfighting) if I remember well, the rafale didn’t suffer a single loss despite the fact that some of the hornets were equipped with JHMS+ Aim 9X. So he really balanced the quality of this feature. He recognized that they were a bit anxious before encountering such a type of threat but in the end it wasn’t really an issue. Second point he said that the SH looses a lot of energy when brutally changing of trajectory and then started to sink…In fact when their US navy counter parts couldn’t point their nose in the direction of the rafale to be within the aim9X firing envelope they strated to do this kind of brutal maneuver which made them loose their energy.
Other “scoop” concerning the rafale vs typhoon…This MN pilot already downed a typhoon with a two supersonic drop tank config (for the rafale) in a simulated gun dogfight. It took him three turns to take the advantage. So he didn’ felt that there was a big gap of performance between the two aircrafts in this area. He admitted that the outcome could have bee different as there is always a part of luck in this type of engagement but he insisted that both aircraft are quite similar for dog fighting skills. He also point out that it is impossible to know the real outcome of a BVR fight since many parameters are unknown. For instance rafale jamming war modes are never used in exercises just like other modern aircrafts.
That is it for the MN rafale pilot.
After the demos, later in the afternoon I went back and talked with an AdA rafale pilote from St Dizier. Just to pick the few interesting things he said (that are not really in the press)…He said that the rafale is in his opinion an excellent aircraft even if in some areas it is not the best. He said that the SH is better to carry heavy loads (it is bigger) that the Typhoon is better at high speeds and that Russian aircrafts are very impressive even if they are less sophisticated than their western counterparts. He said that there are two items were the rafale is above the competition according to pilots feedbacks in international exercises (he mentioned the typhoon the SH and the gripen). It was the Man Machine Interface which is top notch in the rafale according to him as well as the sensor fusion. He even talked about American generals visting St Dizier impressed by the MMI and the level of the situation awareness…(ok here he couldn’t dissimulate his pride at this point!)
The very interesting thing about this pilot is that he already flew with the RBE2 AESA and while he wasn’t specific he said like a children trying a new toy that the gain of performance is huge in every areas. He didn’t try to dissimulate the “wow” factor that he had when trying it.
Perhaps the most interesting meeting I had was with a DGA engineer which was responsible for the AtG weapons integration for the rafale….
So we should soon see the rafale operationally carrying GBU24…Firstly in the centerline pylone (*1) and after on the middle wing stations (*2). On this matter I also saw a reduced scale rafale moke up with three GBU24 on Dassault’s inside stand.
For the OSF-it and the absence of IR channel he said that it was because the pilots didn’t really know how to use it…Just to say that it was not that useful in real life considering the mica IR can already provide IR imaging with a greta field of view. They are integrated in the weapon system. So they preferred to dedicate all the resources to get a very good updated TV channel.
The new TDA rafale rocket pod was also displayed and he told that work in under way to integrate it. He also explained why it is so long to integrate weapons to an aircraft and the difference with crash programs. For instance only the rafale F3 will be able to fully exploit the GBU12. For the moment the firing envelope is very restrictive and it is difficult/energy consuming to use it in A-stan.
Damocles pods arrival is the AdA is imminent with the M2000 and the rafale. The first pods won’t have the rover system though because they aren’t from the newest XF version.
Other noteworthy things the rafale M displayed on Dassault static display has 4 meteors and 4 micas including two on the new outer wing pylons. Most of the reduced scale moke up in Dassault’s inside stand was fitted with micas on these new hard points.
That is it for today…I also talked to AdA commandos (I could handle FAMAS, minimi or sniper rifles), USAF personnel but on other military topics. I hope I forgot anything but I am going back to le Bourget Thursday with an access to dassault’s static display this time so I’ll be able to ask other questions…
(rules)
